Canada on a roll as World Men's Curling Championship set to begin

It's not as though they were a bunch of square pegs trying to force themselves into round holes. Still, in their second year of existence, Kevin Koe and his teammates are feeling a whole lot more comfortable than they did in year one.

With the World Men's Curling Championship looming, Koe and teammates Marc Kennedy, Brent Laing and Ben Hebert have arrived at a place where they feel synchronized both on the ice and off. It's a process that has taken time, repetition, the parking of expectations and some adjustment.

With a tall order ahead - beat the world's best and bring gold back to Canada - Team Koe is in a much better position to take on that challenge than they would have been a year ago.

“It’s nice to win with friends,” said Hebert, illustrating the team's good vibes, as he and Koe fielded questions during a conference call, earlier this week. “We kinda did things our way and that felt really good this year.”

"Our way" means the team has found a unified identity, something that was frustratingly difficult to come by in year one. That maybe shouldn't be surprising, considering the four new mates were bringing successful philosophies together from three different previous teams, trying to merge them all into something that made sense for them all. Koe was coming off his second Brier championship while Laing had spent more than a decade with Glenn Howard, winning two world championships. Hebert and Kennedy had a world championship and Olympic gold from their years with Kevin Martin. Still, Hebert had high standards for the 2014-15 season, expecting the new Team Koe to “knock it out of the park” right way.

They didn't and Hebert believes it was due to entrenched differences.

“I think last year we were, you know, I was kinda trying to do things our old way and Brent (was trying) Team Howard’s way and Kevin his way. But we found our own way and our own recipe for success.”

After an off-season of talking and a re-designing of the collective dynamic, the four found a way home. Hebert says they ended up taking a little from column "A" as well as a little from column "B" and even column "C".

“We’ve taken a little bit of good from everyone’s teams. From Kevin’s old teams and our old team and Glenn Howard’s old team and we’ve kind of meshed into our own team here,” he said.

This will not be an easy task, winning a gold medal at worlds, even if Team Koe has shaken off the awkwardness of  a getting-to-know-you period during their first season. Year two has been much better with the team firing on all cylinders. Their win over Brad Gushue at The Brier vaulted them into position as the number one team in the world, based on the World Curling Tour's year-to-date standings, and they will be thought of as the favourite - if even just a slight one - when The Worlds gets underway in Basel this weekend.

Defending champ Niklas Edin of Sweden is in the field, with his team being primed by an extended stay in Canada over the course of the season. Thomas Ulsrud and his Norwegian rink, champions of 2014, are back too. More of the usual suspects, like Scotland's Tom Brewster (coached by Canadian Mike Harris), Switzerland's Sven Michel and Finland's Aku Kauste (who lost to Canada in the bronze medal game last year) are on the schedule too. As well, The United States will have a strong team. John Shuster's Duluth crew is ranked 11th in the world and is the same foursome that missed out on a playoff position last year when they lost a tiebreaker.

“The Worlds is definitely getting tougher," said Koe. "We don’t wanna take anything for granted."

Wary of what just happened at the World Women's Curling Championship, where an unheralded Japanese team climbed to the silver podium, Koe refuses to take anyone lightly, even though there are some teams - like Japan and South Korea - that he doesn't know much about.

“It’s a big unknown," he admitted. "That being said, we know if we do what we need to do, play like we can and play like we have been, we should be in good shape. But I think the days of just going and, you know you see Russia on your schedule and knowing that was going to be a win? Those days are over.”

Koe gets pressure on top of pressure as his reward for skipping Team Canada at the World Championship.

The pressure of shooting fourth stones is big enough at a competition like this, all by itself. Add to it the weight of a demanding country's expectations and you've got some pretty hefty forces coming down on top of you when you step into the hack with that maple leaf on your back. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that,” Koe said of the gold-or-nothing attitude Canadian curling fans have. “That’s just the way curling in Canada is.”

That's not his motivation, however. Not all of it, anyway.

“You don’t wanna have that sour taste of not winning a worlds after winning that Brier,” Koe said, indicating that a failure to go all the way in Basel would seem a bit of a waste after emerging from what many believe was the toughest field in Brier history. The skip believes his teammates are all on the same train when it comes to that kind of thinking and he dismisses the idea that winning such a tough Brier will have them feeling satiated.

“I definitely don’t get the impression from anyone that there’s any letdown," he insisted.

Said Hebert: “We all have a common goal and I think we all know that we work hard and put a lot of time in and that’s nice, on the road, to know that everyone’s doing everything they can to win. It’s just a lot of fun.”

The tumblers have clicked, for Team Koe, in year two. The foursome is what it was supposed to be. The question is: Does that include being crowned world champions?